Jon Mark Beilue: Book spells out inevitable divorce from Leach

With the backdrop of what could be the worst Texas Tech football season in more than a quarter-century, Michael Lee Lanning’s just-released book, “Double T — Double Cross” couldn’t come out at a better time. Or worse. It all depends on how Tech fans see the old pirate, exiled Mike Leach.

Had the Red Raiders continued an upward trend after upsetting then-No. 3 Oklahoma, 41-38, on Oct. 22 to improve to 5-2 and No. 19 in the country, the book would be nothing more than old water having floated under some long-ago bridge.

But since Tommy Tuberville’s second team has lost four in a row — including three in an embarrassing manner — and is staring at the school’s worst record since 1985, this book is bound to open a few eyes, a few wounds and draw more than a few I-told-you-sos.

Now it’s a little more relevant. It is No. 8 on Amazon’s new football books, and No. 3 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases on Kindle.

“Mike Leach getting terminated is wrong and bad, both morally and legally,” Lanning said earlier in the week.

Leach was fired just before the 2010 Alamo Bowl following the ’09 season. He was initially suspended because of his alleged treatment of wide receiver Adam James, who was reported to have suffered a concussion at a Dec. 16, 2009, practice. When Leach filed a temporary restraining order against Tech three days before the game, he was fired after 10 seasons.

The catchy title of the book came from Arizona-based Scottsdale Book Publishing. That would seem a little presumptuous before the book was written. That is what Lanning, more of a military historian and less a sports fan, thought too.

“I told the publisher I would be glad to do the book, but as the author, I would do the book the way I wanted,” he said. “Basically, I said it will come around to what it should be when I get the facts.”

So what are the facts?

“That the whole situation was unfairly and wrongly handled,” said Lanning, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a Texas A&M graduate. “I knew very little about the Mike Leach firing when it happened. My first response was if they fired a coach who’s that popular and won that many games, they must really have the goods on him.

“I thought things must have been really bad. But the more I got into it, the more it proved not to be true.”

What Lanning’s research intimates strongly is the Tech administration — specifically, Chancellor Kent Hance, then-regent Chairman Larry Anders, then-regent Vice Chairman Jerry Turner and former regent and booster Jim Sowell — were hoping to find a way to fire Leach after the messy contract negotiations that ended in February 2009. And if they could avoid paying him an $800,000 contract bonus on Dec. 31, 2009, so much the better.

Leach signed a new five-year $12.7-million contract — making him one of the 15 highest paid college coaches in the country. Some in the Tech hierarchy thought Leach and his agents got the better of the deal. Tech, bowing to public pressure to renegotiate after an 11-2 season in 2008, resented not only that, but the tenor of the negotiations.

“They got beat, they got ‘outmaneuvered’ as one regent said, by Leach’s city slicker Yankee agents,” said Lanning, a Sweetwater native. “West Texas people are pretty strong, and they don’t like to get beat in anything.

“Their West Texas egos got beaten by a guy wearing Hawaiian shirts and sandals and his yankee agents. Within hours, they were exchanging emails to find something to fire him on the next year.”

That trigger became the Adam James incident.

A Tech spokesman declined to comment, saying that no one in the administration had read the book.

Lanning could not get the main characters to agree to an interview, even Leach, who had his own book. Lanning relied on affidavits, court documents, depositions, emails obtained by the Dallas Morning News, books, Internet sources and interviews with supporting players. The evidence is revealing.

“I consider myself more of a fact-finder,” he said. “What I’ve tried to do is provide the facts and let the reader make his own evaluation.”

There were miscalculations on both sides. Leach, with his quirkiness and cutting edge passing offense, elevated Tech to a national plane never before realized.

Not only did the Raiders become a national media favorite, but Leach went 84-43, his teams went to 10 bowl games and won five, and, in 2008, were as high as No. 2 in the country. It may prove to be a mistake to think just anyone could build upon or maintain what Leach did in his 10 years.

Then again, Leach had his baggage. He went from eccentric and offbeat to prickly, stubborn and egocentric, especially after the 2008 season. He irritated Tech brass by almost yearly looking at other schools — never mind they didn’t look back — as a negotiating ploy.

He wasn’t made to schmooze with boosters that much or raise that much money as most head coaches are required to do. Instead, he could make millions talking about pirates and poker, while designing plays and essentially being a great offensive coordinator disguised as a quirky head coach.

Tech, which has given him his only major college head coaching job, will likely be the highest profile school to let him have that much rope. It’s telling that no other school has yet to seriously inquire about Leach, much less hire him. Of course, suing ESPN and still hoping to sue Tech doesn’t help.

The book leaves no doubt that key Tech power-brokers had enough of Leach heading into that 2009 season. Lanning meticulously spells that out in his concise 155-page book.

But this much is true, too: Both Tech and Leach could barely tolerate each other at the end. Neither appears to be as good without the other, and for both, life on the football field apart may never be the same.

Jon Mark Beilue is a columnist at the Globe-News. He can be reached at jon .beilue@amarillo.com or 806-345-3318. His blog appears on amarillo.com.

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This is about what I heard and read from sources close to TT when it happened. I've heard from a couple of sources who have reason to know that Tubby checked with a school in the Lubbock vicinity before Leach was ever terminated. That shows something behind the scenes was going on. Tubby has baggage. No one else had tried to hire him either. He wanted back in coaching in the worst way. He was friends with James. A few men all with agendas really set the TT football program back several years if not more. Will be interesting before the needed decisions are made to start righting the ship. Those involved all should be barred from TT including Mr Meyers.

TTU actually had something in Leach. As a TTU alum (and lifelong West Texan), I loved that guy's quirkiness. I loved the fact that he came from somewhere else. He was "proof" that we could be innovative, unique in West Texas.

Hance et al took us back to the West Texas status quo, the good 'ol boy network, average football for an average university.

Hance has essentially killed the honors program at Tech and has entered into an agreement with the builders of a parking garage that is costing Tech and it's Alumni Association upwards of a million dollars a year because they can't fill it up (it's right across the freeway from the stadium). It's time for Kent Hance to step down and for a couple of regents to be relieved of their duty. Tech football may never again rise to the level that Coach Leach brought. Tuberville has brought us to a new level, one that I personally do not enjoy. As far as Leach getting a coaching job again, he probably won't until the lawsuits are settled....lawsuits which he was forced to bring to clear his name of the accusations made. I will be watching and cheering for his new team.

Personal vendettas almost always destroy good things. Egomaniacs and narcissists can't see past themselves to make good decisions when a personal vendetta is in the way. Good article, good to know the background info.

Actually, they ran off two: both the men's and women's coaches. Bobby because he had to be nice to his players, and Marsha because she had lost her influence on hers. Bobby's now a tv analyst and Marsha does commercials in the Lubbock market.

.....is a politician. If had seen an advantage for himself to kick Adam James' a$$ out of Tech, he would have been all over Mike Leach's side on this. Everyone knows politicians only think of their own worthless selves.

All y’all need to realize that 84-43 record over 10 years equals a 8-4 record on average. That will get you fired in other schools. Leach was not that good of a coach. He had to have escorts with him all the time because he was so drunk he could not function on his own. Get over it. TT is not a big time football program and will never be.

I'd settle for 8 - 4 this year. The comment about Leach having to have escorts with him all of the time because he was so drunk is simply not true. I've heard of Leach drinking and buying drinks for people at times. This generalization is a bad idea because it kills your credibility. Personally, I have spent time with Coach Leach at functions held in a well known bar in Lubbock and he never drank anything but ice water. That's what I know firsthand and can testify to personally. Whether or not Coach Leach was fired because of his drinking was never even eluded to. He was fired for abusing a player, Adam James, and for not signing a document that admitted as much. The fact is, he never PUT Adam James anywhere. Adam James, in his own court deposition admitted that he thought the whole thing was "funny" and that he did not believe Coach Leach should have been fired over it.

"All y’all need to realize that 84-43 record over 10 years equals a 8-4 record on average. That will get you fired in other schools. Leach was not that good of a coach. He had to have escorts with him all the time because he was so drunk he could not function on his own. Get over it. TT is not a big time football program and will never be."

SOUNDS LIKE SOUR GRAPES FROM A LONGHORN OR AGGIE FAN ... HAHA. AVERAGING WINNING 8 GAMES A YEAR FOR 10 YEARS AND 10 BOWL GAMES IN A ROW AT TECH IS PRETTY MUCH A MIRACLE. NO ONE'S EVER DONE IT BEFORE AND IT'LL BE HARD FOR ANYONE TO EVER DO IT AGAIN ... JUST ASK TUBERVILLE. KINDA HARD TO RECRUIT THOSE 4 AND 5 STAR PLAYERS TO LUBBOCK, TX WHEN THE SAND IS DRIFTING UP AND DOWN THE STREETS ... LEACH DID A GREAT JOB FITTING LESSER RECRUITS INTO HIS SYSTEM. AND ... IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MANY STAR RECRUITS TUBS HAS BROUGHT IN ... CUZ HE CAN'T COACH. HE GOT LUCKY FOR A COUPLE OF SEASONS AT AUBURN WHEN RON ZOOK WAS COACHING FLORIDA, NICK SABAN WAS COACHING THE DOLPHINS, AND LSU HAD HAD SOME OFF YEARS. HERE'S A STAT FOR YOU welldadgum ... TUBERVILLE HAS BEEN A DIVISION 1 HEAD COACH FOR 16 SEASONS. HE HAS WON 7 GAMES OR LESS 7 OF THOSE SEASONS. HE HAS WON ONLY 8 GAMES 3 OTHER SEASONS. SO welldadgum ... BY YOUR STANDARD, TUBERVILLE IS CERTAINLY NOT "that good of a coach". AND BY THE LOOK OF IT, IF HANCE KEEPS HIM AROUND TECH, TUBERVILLE WILL HAVE A FEW MORE SEASONS WITH 7 WINS OR LESS.

I was fortunate to go to Tech while Leach was there. In 2007, I was apart of the crew that would camp out in front of the stadium days before a big game. One night while we were out there, a black SUV rolled up and Leach and his crew stepped out and gave us (about 50ish people) a few containers of hot wings. The next day, they brought us pizza. He told us that he appreciated how we supported TTU football and wanted to do something cool for us.

That sounds like real in-depth reporting there. Is the type really small?

When I went to Tech, going to the All-American Bowl was considered a big achievement. Leach took 'em a long way from that. But there was always going to be a post-Leach era. The school was always going to have to figure out how to win (and improve even) after Leach was gone.

Mike Leach was simply the the Best Coach at Tech that I can Remember. I have been following Tech football since I was a small child. He brought magic to the field. Unfortunatley Tech's administration or controlling interests did not like his non-conformist attitude. He was unconventional, but that trait helped him become the most effective football coach that Tech ever had. He had the best graduatution rate of any school in the Big 12. He did not always say the right things or play golf with the right people. He had the Tech fans backing and the players played their butts off for him. It is a shame that the Tech administrations egos destroyed the best football program that Tech ever had. Under Coach Leach Tech football was the most unique brand of football in the country. Now under Tubberville, brought to you by the Tech administration, Tech football is an average lower level dwelling program. After this railroad job of Mike Leach, I have lost all respect for Kent Hance, the Tech board of regents and Craig James. If I was a UT or A&M fan I would be thankful because the wizard at Tech is now gone.